Episode74
Aglea's Fun-House If you recall from from last episode, our intrepid squad of Light Fisters had gone walkabout in the Dreamscape to stage an ambush for Lady Dream Demon Aglea in the slumbers of her her ex-husband, Lord Gus. We picked things up this time with the PCs all mid-way through their Sneak Attacks on her, finishing them up with multiple Strikes in the 100 to hit zone, and Damage totaling into the hundreds. Unfortunately, she was apparently incapable of being surprised in her current incarnation, and proceeded to instead Critical Defend. This could be a long fight... Using another of her nasty Dream Demon Powers, she tore the non-reality of Gus' 'happy place' asunder, with a giant funnel of HR30 spiders boiling up from beneath her feet that swallowed her up! Kiwi dove straight into the swirling arachnid vortex after her, soon followed by Pete and OJ. Oz was slightly delayed as he tried to save Gus from being swallowed, but soon enough they were both pulled through as well. Fortunately, the journey through the Spider Portal proved short, and we were spit out the other side before taking the Environmental Damage. When we landed we found ourselves standing on the front lawn of a spooky looking 'Haunted' style house, (nice theme action by the Arbiter, this being the day after Halloween), the whole thing surrounded by an impenetrable wall of writhing Arachnids, (note; all types of Spiders were represented, but no Scorpions). We noticed that Gus was not with us, but that our Vision Globe Grafts let us see inside the House, and that Aglea was just inside, standing in the middle of a large chamber with columns all around the outside of it. Gus was chained up to one of them, and the other columns all also had dream captives affixed to them, including Oz's eldest daughter, Grey-Nut the Squirrelomamcer, Mariana the Progenitor, as well as others we didn't necessarily recognize immediately. No matter, obviously we immediately Busted a Move to get inside. As Pete and Joe moved up to flank the door, Oz unleashed the full extent of his Dream Champion-ness with an impressive display of exploding it inward with only the power of his mind! Pete and Joe Charged in, with Kiwi following behind while Oz surveyed the scene from outside, not needing to sully himself with direct involvement. As we entered the house a series of claw like protuberances emerged from the columns and clamped around the captives like ominous cocoons, which was not at all creepy. Meanwhile, Aglea's first effort to stymie our assault was to rush into an adjoining chamber, (the door automatically opening for her and closing again behind her). This thwarted Pete's attempt to chase her, as he was already locked into the Speed Factor of a shot with his Rifle, so he shot her through the door anyway, Armor Piercing it and forcing her to spend the first of many, (many, many), Actions on an Acrobatic Defend. Joe soon followed up with a smash to the door from his Exo-Axe, sundering it thoroughly. As Pete & Joe charged into the room after Aglea, Oz attempted another Dream Manipulation to grab her up with grasping hands emerging from the area rug, but she shrugged off his attempt to influence the Dreamscape by winning a Dream Contest. At this point however, a stroke of luck on our side this time, as Aglea rolled a Natural 1 Defend on the next Segment, allowing Pete and OJ to slam into her for a hundredandfiftyish RFless DR! Of course she took this in stride, turned on her heel and darted back into the central chamber. We were a bit perplexed by her maneuvers, but no matter, she walked straight into Kiwi & Oz there! Her intentions were soon made clear however, as she discharged a huge area effect blade explosion attack that caught all of the PCs in it's area of effect. The effect of the blast on the trapped NPCs was difficult to determine, but it seems likely that it may have been poor? Sigh, this could be a long fight... Kiwi attempted to end it quickly though, with his patented 'Rear Mount', subjecting Aglea to his full anti-teleport lock-down. She of course laughed this off, transmogriphying into a writhing swarm of spiders and scuttling off over to the other side of the room! This time it was Oz that won the Dream Contest though, after activating his Empower item to boost his MS dramatically (+69 to Dream Contests, Awooooooo!), forcing her back into her normal (Human Dream Demon) form. From this point on it was just an all out, knock down, drag out pit fight, with the entire Fister-Squad unleashing their full arsenals on her, forcing her to Acrobatic Defend over and over again while at the same time spamming us with terrible -90 to Save against Defend-Inhibiting Mind attacks, Armor-Ignoring Direct to DC Psychic Damage and retarded Telekinetic Flurry-Bursts, (all with a specific Hate-On for Oz, of course, forcing lots of Acro-defends but ultimately knocking him Prone - twice! - and dummying on him repeatedly for nearly 300 DR). We only rolled one Critical Strike on the night for all of us, but were rewarded for our perseverance with another Natural 1 Defend by Aglea, this time on a Segment when 3 of us were attacking, so our whining about our luck was probably, well, just about as bad as normal, honestly. Oz eventually realized that he had no idea how to use the Dream Knife so spent an action examining it and discovered that it could be used to cut someone out of the Dream. However, it takes a bit of time to finishing cutting them out so they need to be held in-place while it happens. Killing Aglea may just force her to re-appear elsewhere. One other tidbit, the holder of the Dream Knife is especially vulnerable to death in the Dream. If he dies in the dream then he is forever lost. Scary! As we approached the end of the night Aglea made a break for a room on the other side of the main chamber, (the 2 doors in a row to it both opening automatically for her, but staying open behind her this time). Then she did a big area attack that sucked us all into the room with her, followed up with a dream manipulation that filled the room with boiling spiders that deal 50 RFless DC every 3 Segments (hitting on a 27 and again on a 30). Yes, this is about when the doors automatically closed, and when we noticed that OJ had used his Special Perk to ignore effects from failed Saves to remain back in the main chamber (Kiwi also totally defended the attack but decided to stay close to Aglea in the spider room because he's so badass). Fuck! Oz and Kiwi remained fixed on Aglea while Pete and Joe started hacking through the multiple doors to the room full of spiders. This proved to be not really the best plan though, because once the doors were toast the spiders started pour out into the room with the captives! As we left things off, (Initiative 25 of the first Round of Combat), Pete was cowering inside his spider free Portable Fort, Joe had cleverly used his Cryo-Ejector to temporarily stem the flow of spiders, and Oz and Kiwi are locked in mortal combat with the Demon, (OK, Kiwi is punching her repeatedly while she finishes her Flurry on the - still Prone - Oz, who is desperately trying to finish his delayed Speed Factor - 1 segment left - to Dreamshape the spiders out of existence before they deal their RF by-passing damage again). Yah, so, that long fight thing? 11 Combat for the logger Back to Space Junk Log